Albums of My Life - 1977 - Television "Marquee Moon"

by Steve Pick

Nearly 25 years ago, a very good friend of mine got to spend a few months living in Paris, and inevitably, she found herself wandering around in the Louvre one day. When she came across what I had always thought was the most famous statue in the world, the Venus de Milo, she suddenly burst out laughing. For the first time, she got the joke, as she had somehow lived her whole life to that point not realizing that this Venus had no arms any more.

The joke is in the second song on Television's impeccable Marquee Moon. "And I fell / Did you feel low? / No,not at all. / Huh? / I fell right into the arms of Venus de Milo."

Well, it's funny, but it's not merely a joke. The song exists on the border between feeling alive and aware of a future, and empty and lost and not caring about anything. Tom Verlaine's character seems to dance across the city of New York, encountering strangers on the Bowery, actors from Broadway, and an old friend who urges him to take a needless risk. He is aware of all these things, but none of them affect him; Verlaine holds on to the memory of astounding beauty, a statue so perfect that even with all the loss it has sustained over the years, it remains an ideal of artistic excellence.

And, then there are the guitars - honestly, as great as Verlaine's lyrics are, and everything about the way he delivers them, it is the guitar interplay between Verlaine and Richard Lloyd which elevates this album into the pantheon of greatness which it occupies. The liner notes take great pains to tell us which one plays which parts, but I've never really bothered to think too much about that. Instead, I prefer to think of the two of them melded into one mind, where rhythm guitar and lead guitar combine to create some of the most beautiful, eloquent, dirty, and hard-hitting sounds in all of rock.

I'm not a believer in any kind of God, but there is a passage in the song "Marquee Moon" which feels to me like a manifestation of the divine. It's a mysterious song, with images of darkness doubling, of lightning striking itself, of Cadillacs pulling in and out of graveyards, and of standing underneath a moon which feels like a marquee. All of this is sung, spat, delivered in Verlaine's exceptionally unconventionally pretty yet precise vocals, as one guitar chugs a rhythm, another guitar dances filigrees around it, the bass thuds in counter-rhythm, and the drums, as always on this record, are filling in astounding rhythmic details few would think of trying, let alone actually attempting.

Then, about four and a half minutes in, the filigree guitar takes off. The song is modal, and two chords alternate four measures of two beats each, giving the lead guitar enough time to slowly climb up the fretboard again and again every eight measures. But that's not doing enough justice to what happens here - there are explorations, inventions, melodic delights aplenty over the next few minutes, as the rhythms subtly speed up, the dynamics get louder, and the solo becomes more and more intense. This is the sound of searching, of attempting to find meaning, or God, or whatever profound secret one is interested in. And then, after climbing as high as possible, the piano delivers the sound of a rushing stream, and the guitar, now gently plucked with some effect pedal adding light resonance, gives the answer long sought. It is the beginning, the Word made Sound, and it brings calm to my soul every time I hear it. And then, it all starts over, the band returns to the rhythm, and Verlaine sings again, "I remember when the darkness doubled." The first verse leads to a fade-out, indicating that the answer is never enough, the quest must always continue.

Marquee Moon gives us eight songs, five of which are easily among rock's masterpieces, and the other three are merely exceptionally good. I didn't hear it in 1977 - few outside of New York and the rock critic intelligentsia of the time did. I really have no memory of discovering this record, but it had to happen sometime in the next few years. I also have no memory of ever not knowing and loving and thrilling to what more than deserves every accolade it has accumulated in all this time. If you know it, you know what I mean; if you don't, you will not believe what you have missed.